Strange and wonderful.

Gripping in part because it combines a detective story with a Kafkaesque nightmare of becoming tangled in academic bureaucracy. Crucially, throughout, Viren reflects on the relationship between truth and facts.

If Viren had pursued her original intent, the resulting book — about the making of a conspiracy theorist — would have been disturbing enough, especially as undertaken by someone with her expansive mind, journalistic skills and ability to write clearly about even the most opaque ideas. But the subject defies her initial plan and becomes far more unsettling in the process.

It not only brings us through a philosophical exploration of these concepts but it also becomes a challenge to Woolf’s conception of a before self and a now self. How can we so easily box ourselves and our experiences into two separate worlds, two separate planes, two separate selves?.

Even in the days after I’ve read the book, I’ve found myself haunted by what Viren reveals not just about her life, but all our lives.

Two experiences intertwine in To Name the Bigger Lie, and both stories are gripping; they unfurl with a sense of suspenseful foreboding to show how lies can tear apart the fabric of everyday life and our most intimate relationships. But underlying them is a more groping, philosophical inquiry...to probe our sense of what is real, how we know, and, most importantly, how we come to that knowledge together. Ultimately, Viren argues less for the pursuit of truth than the pursuit of understanding, and the necessity of this...as a social responsibility. This, she says, is the work of storytelling..

A poignant musing on the changing nature of truth..

Immersive.

Propulsive, one-of-a-kind.